OER Benefits and Challenges

1. Witch Way Do You Fly
On The Benefits and
Challenges Of Open
Educational Resources
(OER) ?
By: Gail Baldwin

2. The Benefits are like
working with the Good
Witch …
Access to 750 FREE quality online
courses from leading universities
Yale University
Harvard University
Stanford University
Johns Hopkins University
Carnegie Mellon University
University of California at Berkeley
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

3. The Benefits are like
working with the Good
Witch…
Preparation for course and retention
of knowledge by…
*enhancing opportunities for
students who took the course and
prospective students.
*allowing the opportunity to take a
look at the course prior to taking
course and being better prepared.
*allowing the opportunity to revisit
course to refresh and reinforce what
was learned in the area studied.

4. The Benefits are like
working with the Good
witch…
OERs are free!
OER does not need large amounts of
$$$ for compensation for using it.
OER allows all students to have the
opportunity to learn.
OER allows instructors to discover
alternative ideas for presenting and
teaching subject matter.
OER gives instructors various
options to point students to
alternative explanations for further
study.

5. The Benefits are like
working with the Good
Witch…
OER gives more clarity and/or
certainty regarding reuse of
materials.
OER gives peace of mind when re-using
someone else’s materials.
OER resources are licensed to allow
the sharing of content.
OER eliminates the need to contact
the author about making use of
his/her work provided that what you
want to do falls within the ‘open’
license.

6. The Benefits are like
working with the Good
Witch…
Some other benefits of OER are…
*OER showcases research.
*enhances a university’s reputation
as well as that of the teacher or
researcher.
*shares best practice internationally.
*allows for peer review.
*maximizes the use and increases
availability of educational materials.
*raises standard of educational
resources by gathering more
contributors.

7. The Challenges are like
being around the Bad
Witch…
Some concerns with Quality Assurance:
Finding resources that are quality and
relevant.
Institutions going through internal
review process before releasing them
to the public are not open in the sense
that the user of the resource can
follow them. (text from Open Educational
Resources (Links to an external site.) by Jan Hylen,
CC-BY (Links to an external site.)).

8. The Challenges are like
being around the Bad
Witch…
Another Quality Assurance
concern:
There is a lack of research data
focusing on comparing the amount
students learn from OER compared
to the amount they learn from
prevailing publisher materials.
Whether the material is free or
expensive, quality does matter.

9. The Challenges are like
being around the Bad
Witch…
Concerns of Sustainability with OER:
In the past, many were dependent
on one-time start-up funding.
Is likely to cease after a few years
and maintaining the resources will
be difficult and expensive.
Maintenance of resources will
become obsolete and quality will be
lost.
Is critical to figure out.

10. The Challenges are like
being around the Bad
Witch…
Lack of public understanding with
OER:
Since OER is only about 10 years old
and recent in education.
Due to hugh paradigm shift and
attitude change.
Because few educators understand
the potential and feel threatened.
To recognize open licenses (Creative
Commons) clearly recognize and
reinforces intellectual ownership,
making sharing easy while
protecting the copyright.

11. The Challenges are like
being around the Bad
Witch…
Non-revocable Creative commons
licenses means what?
While Creative Commons licenses
are completely non-revocable, it is
technically not a concern but rather
something that OER providers might
find challenging in releasing their
works since work under the license
can be pulled but will not affect the
rights associated with any copies of
your work already in circulation
under a Creative Commons license.

12. Educators today need to understand
the benefits and challenges of OER.
Don’t let the goblins get you this
Halloween. Know witch is witch.